Faith and Science

 

An interesting report was published on Monday by the Christian Think Tank Theos and the Faraday Institute.  It’s headline finding was that hostility towards religion in favour of science is declining.

Now, like all statistics that has to be read in context!  That’s because, although such hostility may be going down in some age groups, the report still found that of those questioned no less than 80% said they thought science and faith remain incompatible.

This report questioned just over 5,000 people and it found that it was those on the younger side of the age spectrum that were more open minded about the place of faith in the world.

I find this fascinating simply because I spend so much of my life with fellow Christians, many of whom willingly embrace the insights of modern science alongside their faith. So, it’s helpful to be reminded that others in society are not at all sure of this compatibility.

Over recent years we’ve all become more aware of a phenomenon of ‘militant’ atheism.  So it was interesting to read that one of the respondents to this survey was keen to say: I want it on record, don’t just put me down as an atheist in the Richard Dawkin’s type.  Because I am not an atheist like him at all!

Another finding from the report that caught my eye was that sixteen years ago when Dawkin’s published his book The God Delusion 42% of adults polled agreed with him that Faith is one of the world’s great evils, alongside something like smallpox. Today that’s down to 21%.  But that still sends shivers up my spine, that so many people actually think the message I would be preaching week by week from the pulpit is intrinsically ‘evil’.

However, there is some encouragement in the findings (if statistics do it for you) in that 46% said all religions have some element of truth in them and 64% said that science could not explain everything.

I always love the fact that in our house I’m a jobbing theologian and Rachel has spent part of her adult life as an academic scientist.  And that we feel, in our own way, is an example that you can marry the two together!

Returning...

 

It’s interesting to read,or listen again, to some of the ‘Thought for the Day’ type pieces us clerics wrote two years ago as life ground to a halt. Some predicted there would be no ‘return to normal’. Instead the would be forever changed.

Well, I suppose the jury is still out on that one! However, I think it’s equally true that many of us have loved returning to many old traditions and former ways.

Undoubtedly most parents have appreciated their children being able to return to the routine of school and it’s been our experience at AFC that many have really enjoyed coming back to in person worship.

Yet the world is undoubtedly a different place and many of the former institutions or ‘ways of being’ we might have termed as ‘normal’ in the past have either totally disappeared or been significantly modified.

And we have changed too. So we bring our new and different selves to this 'returning’. And hopefully we do that in a spirit of thanksgiving as we appreciate afresh that which we temporarily lost.

As we move to the season of resurrection maybe it’s worth reflecting on Lazarus’ ‘returning’. His resurrection wasn’t to something new but old - his former way of life. We know his sisters rejoiced at this possibility - and we hope Lazarus did too! I suspect that family in Bethany lived everyday with a new and heightened sense of gratitude because the one they thought they had lost forever now occupied his seat at the table.

Returning. Resurrection. Thanksgiving.

All themes worth reflecting on as we walk from Maundy Thursday, through Good Friday and on into Easter Day.

Blog holiday next week!

View From The Pew

 

On Sunday 3rd April 2022 I visited St John's Church, Lewisham in South London as part of my Sabbatical Programme.  See the review at: https://viewfromthepewsabbatical.blogspot.com/2022/04/ 

The Story within the stories

 

Reflection given at Zoom Night Prayer on Monday 4th April 2022

John 18.12-24

Reading tonight’s gospel passage reminds me that the Story of our Salvation is found within the everyday stories of daily life in first century Jerusalem.  It is the story within the stories.

Take Annas, faither in law to the High Priest Caiaphas.  His story dominated the initial decades of the first century.  He had been High Priest himself and remained the ‘power behind the throne’ whilst he fours sons, in turn, succeeded him.  Now, with his son in law in power, he remained the mover and shaker in chief.

Annas, it’s thought, was just about as corrupt as they come.  He was a sycophant to the Roman Governor rather than a champion of the Jewish people. 

His family were immensely rich because they owned the stalls in the temple selling unblemished animals, the only sort suitable for sacrifice.  Even the poorest worshipper had to buy their sacrifice at the Booths of Annas at a price which was almost ten times more expensive than outside the temple precincts.  These were the booths that Jesus turned over when he took a stand against extortion in the name of justice. 

No wonder the troops took Jesus to Annas first.  The old high priest wanted to see the young upstart face to face.  And when he did, he broke the law.  A Jewish law which said no question could be asked of a prison which, when answered, would self-incrimate him.  So, Jesus answers back by saying, ‘Ask others, not me’.  He wasn’t evading the law, just reminding Annas that it was he, Annas, who was breaking it at this point by asking this type of unlawful self-incriminating question.

So much going on.  So much history. The story, within all these stories.

 

And then, this evening, a mystery.  The mystery of an un-named disciple who has right of access to Annas’ house, who is allowed in first because he is well known there, and then sends out a message to Peter that he too could come in.

Who was that mysterious disciple with unexpected connections in high places?  Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, Judas, or was it John, the writer of the fourth gospel himself, the beloved disciple?  Some think it might have been.  They suggest John’s Galilean family had a branch office in Jerusalem and sold salted fish from the north in the capital, even supplying the house of Annas.

Another story within the story.

For us, of course, there’s only one story in Holy Week, yet in reality it was going on within the context of all the others.

I remember those days after my parents or grandparents died almost feeling surprised that other people were still getting on with their routines in the shops, on the buses, on the TV, when the only thing that mattered to me seemed so earth shatteringly big, yet no one, outside the family, was noticing.

The final ordinary, routine story of the night came at 3am, the start of the 3^rd watch.  Peter denies his Lord three times, not as a real cock crowed, for no cocks were allowed in the city, but as the early morning trumpet call, which happened at 3am every day to signal the beginning of the 3^rd watch of the night, was sounded.  A trumpet call commonly referred to as the cock crow. 

And once again The Story of Holy Week finds its place within the stories of every day and every night.

God’s activity, the moving of the Spirit among us, isn’t separate from but integral to our ordinary lives and the many stories that make up our every day.  It’s in those ordinary moments when we meet with God and his story becomes ours.  There really isn’t something called sacred, and something called secular, just life. And God is part of it all.

Come to the Waters

Living Water display at the BURG Retreat

Talk given to the Baptist Union Retreat Group this week, the theme of which was 'water'.

On our first visit to Venice, in the early years of our marriage and on a holiday when we counted every lira (pre-Euro days), I dropped the only bottle of water we had left.  The next day we were driving to the Black Forest, so we had no local currency to buy anymore.  It was a boiling hot day and I remember the sound it made as the bottle hit the pavement and burst.

Water is so important and so easy to take for granted.

The other night we attended a talk at a village hall.  My family, many generations ago, came from a village near Amersham called Sarratt, so we turned up at the Sarratt Historical Society’s evening talk on local pubs.  We loved the history and reckoned my relatives would have known quite a few of these establishments, and in the questions afterwards a lady asked a very pertinent question:  Did anyone know when piped water came to the village?  Of course, ale and beer were considered healthier options in the day when water was scarce or contaminated.  Piped, running water transformed lives.

Jesus calls himself and the gospel he taught:  Life Giving Water.

It was a metaphor all about being refreshed and sustained.  Water is life giving to the body.  Living Water is life giving to the soul.

I find this symbolism so encouraging.  That faith and belief in God can bring such a positive understanding to life.  It can sustain us and makes so much possible.

This year I was very taken by the Old Testament reading set for the 2^nd Sunday of Lent from Isaiah 55.  In it the prophet invites those returning from Exile to Come to the Waters.

No longer are these the waters of Babylon, but of Jerusalem.

And yet, returning home wasn’t going to be easy.  The city was in ruins, there would be quarrels about land and food was in short supply.  Maybe this wasn’t the Utopia they were longing for.

And maybe emerging from Covid isn’t Utopia either, especially when it feels just as one world crisis is beginning to subside and another started.

But 500 years before Jesus, Isaiah calls a returning people who will be facing continuing struggles even though they have returned home to Come to the Water.  A call of hope.  A call to trust.  A call to receive God’s help and sustaining joy.

2000 years ago Jesus issued the same call to the Woman at the Well.  Come to the Water, drink of this living water and let it be a well of water springing up inside you to nourish and sustain.

It's still a wonderful invitation and a life sustaining promise:
Isaiah says: Come to the Water.
Jesus says: I am the Living Water.